Page 6 of Goal Line

Fuck.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Zach asks. Unlike my teammates, he doesn’t look pissed that we’re down by a point. Instead, his face is full of concern for me.

“I don’t know,” I say, shaking my head to clear away the thoughts of Eva—but I can’t. They’re intrusive. Images of her flood my mind until I feel like I’m going crazy with worry. Worry that overwhelms me and clouds my judgement and allows yet another goal to get by me.

“All right, boys,” Drew says with a definitive nod. “Now it’s our turn.”

Somehow, we manage to keep the puck down at the other net for the next two minutes, and when we score, it feels like maybe we can retake the lead, or at least tie it up and then fix this mess in overtime. We’re only down by one now, and Drew’s goal seems to have rallied the guys. With renewed energy, we control the puck and remain on offense...until one of their forwards snags it and makes a breakaway.

He’s headed right toward me, and with renewed focus, I crouch into position, ready for the shot. As he pulls his stick back, I butterfly down to my left to block it, but the shot doesn’t come. Instead, he takes the puck behind the net, and I don’t react fast enough when he comes around the other side. Behind me, the lamp lights up with the signal that St. Louis has slid the puck into the goal. Again.

The buzzer sounds, and St. Louis’s players jump the boards and flood the ice to celebrate winning the StanleyCup. And as I hang my head, knowing that this is at least half my fault, I still can’t think about anything but Eva.

Chapter Four

EVA

Eva

I’m so sorry about the game!

Istare at my text that Luke hasn’t responded to as we exit the narrow highway that winds up Boston’s North Shore to our small coastal town. Winters can be bleak up here, but tourists flood the area in the summer, thanks to our beautiful beaches, local farms, and the abundance of coastal restaurants.

No matter what you’re looking for, summer in Newbury Falls will most likely have it.

“You look tired,” Mom says, and when I glance over at her, she turns her head forward and lets off the brake, moving us through the intersection mobbed with people out enjoying this warm summer night.

Another wave of nausea rolls through me, and I focus onthe road ahead. I get car sick easily, and pregnancy only makes it worse.

“Shocker, given that I was just hospitalized for exhaustion.”

Of course I’m fucking tired, I want to scream. I just survived fifteen hours on three different flights, with a short ER visit before the last leg of travel, only to arrive back in Boston and have to hunt down my luggage at baggage claim, since it had arrived on my original flight.

In addition, I’ve been working overtime to keep my body in shape while ensuring I could hide this pregnancy from the world until the season ended, and yeah...the deep circles under my eyes don’t lie.

“Don’t be a smartass,” she says.

I glance back down at my phone, wishing Luke would reply. I know the game ended an hour ago. They announced the loss on the radio, saying, “Hartmann choked so bad, someone should have given him the Heimlich.” I immediately searched online to see what the hell they were talking about.

Luke is an amazing goalie. He’s still fairly early in his career, but he’s good, and one day, he’s going to be great. Tonight, though? According to the brief clips I watched on my phone as Mom drove, tonight he was awful.

I don’t know what the hell happened, but he looked like an amateur—like someone who’d only played goalie in juniors had somehow found himself between the pipes in the NHL. His reaction time was sluggish and his ability to anticipate where a shot would go—which has always been a sixth sense for him—completely failed him tonight.

In short, he was as terrible as the radio announcer had made him out to be.

Luke’s always prepared. He goes into every game utterly focused, knowing exactly what he needs to do. I know he wasn’t the starting goalie tonight, but he’s a professional, and I can’t understand why he wasn’t ready when he was sent in.

That goalie I just saw clips of...that wasn’t my best friend—there has to be something else going on.

As I sit here, trying to tune out my mother while she lectures me about taking better care of myself, I’m imagining what’s going through Luke’s mind. He exhibits the happy-go-lucky personality of a golden retriever, but he feels things deeply. Maybe too deeply, sometimes.

Getting traded to Boston, playing for the team his family owns and my dad coaches...this is the most genuinely happy I’veeverseen him. I don’t want him to feel like that’s in jeopardy—but after the way he played tonight, it could be. And that has me terrified for him.

“So,are you?” The sharpness of my mother’s tone snaps me out of my own head.

“Sorry, am I what?”

Her sigh fills the entire car. “I asked if you’re getting enough protein.”